The Oscar-winning director who has sometimes put his heavy frame too conspicuously in some of his films, here deals with some of the most pressing issues facing Americans today and finds solutions in the most unlikely countries, where he symbolically plants the American flag as though he is a one-man invasion to steal their ideas.

This is an unusual call to arms to re-capture ideas which America often originated but have been forgotten in this country while used to great effect in other countries. The police in Portugal (where drug use is all legal) say that America must get rid of capital punishment as a first step. Even the poorest grade schools in France have a special nutritious menu and the chef of one showed five different cheeses that he served. In Finland they have the highest education rate and the high schoolers who met with Moore often spoke several languages. There are 100 courses taught in English in Slovenia for the many American students who can’t afford even the city colleges here and go there for free education. In Italy workers get up to two months paid holiday time and are the better for it. The prison systems also get a visit from Moore, who finds them 100% better than U.S. prisons and with a very low rate of recidivism too, compared to the U.S.

In Iceland, they actually sent the male executives of three banks responsible for the financial crisis to prison, while the one bank operated by women was not part of the crisis. Of course in the U.S. the government actually bailed out the banks and only one lowly person was arrested. The film ends with a stroll along what’s left of the Berlin wall, with Moore thinking about such unbelievable things happening and maybe we’ll get back our concern for the people around us and not just for ourselves alone.